This specification relates to digital data processing, and particularly to an automated system for updating software.
An online website or an enterprise application may have hundreds of servers deployed to process data and serve webpages to users. Each server can have many software applications installed on it. For each of these software applications, there may be updates that are periodically sent out by the software publishers. Some updates are security fixes and are critical in nature. Some updates are optional but are needed to keep the software updated such that when a security patch needs to be applied, it is applied to the latest version of the software. Updates from some software publishers have a better track record of installing smoothly while updates from other software publishers can cause servers to malfunction. It can be a challenge for a user to determine which software updates to actually install and which to not install.